I'm excited to be a mentor for Court Science Fiction during this year's #PitProm again.

What is #PitProm? It's a pitch contest running from July 14 to July 28, 2018 for science fiction and fantasy manuscripts (Adult and YA). You can find more information about #PitProm, how to participate, as well as info about everyone involved and mentoring on pitprom.com

Here's how it works:

July 14, 2018: Submit the following between 10 am and 11:59 pm CST on the #PitProm Website:

Your 140-character pitch (including the #PitProm hashtag)

Your query

The first 10 pages of your science fiction or fantasy manuscript

Eli Celata and Kadee Carder (the Royal Advisors) will go through the first 200 entries and pick the top 20 (10 science fiction and 10 fantasy)

Mentors will pick two mentees to work with for the following week and will help them edit their pitches, queries, and pages for the Agent Round

Final revisions of pitches, queries, and pages will go live on the #PitProm website for one week during which agents will read and request materials they are interested in

The two manuscripts with the most requests are crowned #PitProm winners!

What I'm looking for in a mentee:

I would love to mentor marginalized and #ownvoices queer writers of fast-paced science fiction with unique concepts and world buildings. For me, characters make or break a story, so I am looking for complex character relationships who grab me by the feels and don't let go. I'm a sucker for well-executed subversions of tropes, but here are some of my all-time favorite tropes that get me nearly every time: enemies to lovers, reluctant heroes, found families, moral gray zones, and generally, worlds were queerness and your characters' identities aren't issues, but just part of who your characters are. Also, give me genre-bending science fiction with magic-like special abilities and social commentary that fits your world. Don't make things easy for your characters. I also would love to see more pansexual, asexual and aromantic, as well as trans and nonbinary characters in science fiction as well as more intersectionality in general.

Why I love mentoring:

I'm very firmly in the camp of authors who believe that the more you critique and the more you work with beta readers, critique partners, and feedback in general, the more your writing will evolve. There are always things you miss. You should never be the only one reading your work, because at some point you are bound to lose all objectivity. Plus, let's face it, the writing community is amazing and I personally have learned so much from others that I want to do my own bit, but also get to know more people, because they more, the merrier. Personally, I am really passionate about seeing more diverse books on bookshelves and the best guarantee for that, other than writing them myself, is to help others get their work on shelves and on people's e-readers. So that's what I'm here to do and I'm excited to meet this year's mentees. Last year was great and tons of fun, so I can't wait to see what this year will bring!

Pitch and Query Critique Giveaway!

Speaking of supporting marginalized writers, I am going to give away TWO Twitter pitch and query critiques to marginalized writers, specifically. To enter, do the following:

Leave a comment on this post, telling me about what your favorite thing of giving or receiving critique is and what kind of critique would be most helpful to you! Please include your Twitter handle so I can contact you if you win!